Friday, July 22, 2016

Rumor: Game Based on New Mega Man Cartoon in Development

The Mega Man Network brings us a doozy of a rumor today, one not entirely out of the realm of possibility. According to an anonymous but close source, a game based on Man of Action's 2017 Mega Man cartoon is in under way. It will purportedly launch in "two forms": a main version developed by Capcom for home consoles, PC and PlayStation Vita and a "weaker" version for Nintendo 3DS and mobile. You can read the full details of the rumor here.

Personally, I'm a bit skeptical on this one...

Indeed, a game based on the cartoon is one of many possible forms the show will conceive during its run next year - this we know. But the number of SKUs it will reportedly appear on doesn't feel quite right. By the time the show will air - now largely speculated to be closer to December 2017 - support for Wii U (and maybe even Vita) will have dried up. Capcom hasn't fully supported the Wii U since 2013's DuckTales port, mind you. The company even passed up the opportunity for a Mega Man Legacy Collection port. That says a lot right there.

The names of the baddies are another topic of interest. According to the rumor, the game (and maybe the cartoon) will forgo the "-Man" Robot Master designation in favor of musical names such as "Flare Symphony," "Frostbite Sonata," and "Saber Waltz." It's an interesting idea, however, it does not align with those preliminary notes I've got.

For the uninitiated, these notes date back to 2015 when the show was first conceptualized by Man of Action before being Capcom approval. Here, Mega Man was described as a middle to high school aged Robot living a dual life - one as a student, the other as his alter-ego Mega Man. This was confirmed back in late May.

Anyway, these same notes do name drop familiar characters from Dr. Light and Roll, to Rush and Eddie. Robot Masters Fire Man and Ice Man are specifically mentioned, too, as antagonists. Point is, very early in the show's life Robot Masters were considered to make up the show's rogues gallery. I'm not ruling out the chance of "Flare Symphony" and his (or her?) ilk; just know "-Man" Robot Masters are part of those early show notes. To the rumor's favor, however, the very mysterious "Mega Mini" was *not* described anywhere. Things naturally change over the course of production.

All in all, I don't doubt a game based on this show is in development. I'm a little weary of the details of this specific rumor, though.

35 comments:

Meh, a game based on the cartoon is bound to happen sooner or later. Capcom seems to be trying to copy the Sonic Boom strategy that Sega has used to further ruin the Sonic franchise in recent years. So it is almost a certainty that Capcom will release a few games to tie in with the cartoon and the inevitable toy line/novelty food items/stickers/trinkets/etc.

With that said, the real question is what the quality of the game will be. I'm not getting my hopes very high, but I am surprised that the rumor says that Capcom is actually planning to release a game on consoles as opposed to just making a mobile-only game. At any rate, since the game will be a means to further cash in on the cartoon, I expect it to be mediocre but am still hoping it will at least be OK. Something of similar quality to Megaman Network Transmission would be passable IMO, but I am skeptical it'll exceed my already low expectations. Please prove me wrong Capcom.

Tbh with anyone, any game based off a show/cartoon normally is really bad. As good as a new megaman game may sound, it will probably just go in a weird direction with very akward gameplay compared to the original series. Say for instance, the pac man and the ghostly adventures game, it totally skewed up the whole point of pac man to make way for plot on the new show. New plot, possibly new gameplay, which could be good or bad in any sense.

@Anon6:50: A separate spin-off completely different RPG style series, that took place in an alternate universe that made it plainly evident it was a spin-off to run ****ALONG SIDE**** the original Mega Man continuity of which it actually did do, butchered Mega Man.

Yeah OK buddy, nice logical deduction there.

@Anon:532: Agreed this show sucks it is a Mega Man butchery yes, but mainly because of it's crappy quality from what I've seen so far, from premise to art (which is predictable from the studio producing it). I'll give it a shake but my expectations a low as heck.

It certainly won't be "our" Megaman, but it could still be interesting. Maybe even good.

My only concern is... a Mega Man game for the PC?? It's not exactly unheard of, what with the PC ports of every Mega Man X game except for X2 and both Legends games... but the idea of a "classic-style" Mega Man game being released on the PC that isn't some 3rd party thing is kind of weird, to me. I guess those headscratchers from Ronzer Labs (and the somewhat altered port of Mega Man X) have me hesitant -- especially since Mega Man 8-10 were skipped over for porting.

Saw this coming about a billion miles away. It really does look like Capcom was holding off on any new games after Mega Man 10 so they could basically, for the lack of a better word, not think or work hard to continue any of the ongoing series and storylines and just ride this new property. Essentially a roundabout reboot.

And those robot master names? Cute, but at this rate.....this might as well be an entirely different Mega Man property series. It shouldn't be called simply "MegaMan".

Doesn't seem like the wisest move if this is really going to be Capcom's attempt to really let the series be known by casual players of today. If it's just being made to cash-in on the cartoon it makes a little more sense.

Producing physical copies is expensive! Any unsold inventory is basically lost money.

The industry's been making a move towards digital distribution for some time, where there's no physical copy production or shipping costs involved. Digital generally seems to be the best way to go for making potentially risky products... well, less risky. It makes them not need to sell as many copies to make back the return on their investment.

The Ace Attorney games are a good example of this - they're niche here in the US, so Capcom USA decided making them digital-only is the best way to make them profitable, inconvenient as it is for the end consumer if they already have a lot of stuff on their 3DS memory card.

I get that, but if this is Capcom trying to breathe new life into the series but they can't be bothered to make something physical for casual users who don't frequent game websites or virtual stores, I can't say I'd be optimistic.

Not that they've ever done their best to promote Mega Man in the past. But digital only seems like a big handicap right off the bat for what this project is supposedly being made for.

well, with each new piece of news, rumor or otherwise, I'm getting more and more sold....on the idea of completely boycotting the new interpretation. even as a spin off this just looks/sounds/feels bad in every sense.at least mmbn and mmsf looked good if nothing else.

MMSF3- This game didn't have a game released in the same year, but plenty the year before and after-Also of note around this time MMU-MMO-and MML3 were circulating.

So at no point in time did people not have the option to choose between a traditional style MM game or the Network timeline games, no Mega Man fan was ever obligated to support the MMBN or SF games in order to support traditional style MM games. Yet, MMN timeline games consistently out preformed other MM games all the way till the point of well.... Now.

Battle Network and Star Force were good, and I don't know why a few people keep comparing this to those, the RPG Mega Man games weren't reboots, they were just alternate takes on the source material that ran directly alognside the traditional 2D Mega Man titles.

They had really good world building, a wonderful art direction, and amazing and creative battle systems that managed to convert the soul of Mega Man into a TCG action RPG hybrid.

Seriously Star Force is my 2nd favorite Mega Man series, everything mentioned above plus it's surprisingly great character and plot depth make it a special set of games for me, Battle Network comes in right behind it too.

I literally do not understand why the devs have not even ATTEMPTED to make a crossover Classic/Battle Network game (at least to anyone's knowledge).

That should have been the logical progression considering both series are literally alternate universes of each other and both comprise of the largest fanbases in the entire franchise, but instead they're investing completely into this highly questionable reboot whose quality is unproven.

And that artwork and premise does not inspire the idea that it'd have the charm and world building of the two series (though classic's world building was minimalist, it was still able to explain quite a lot with what little time the series actually spent on the story).

@Alilatias: They never did a Classic/BN crossover, but they DID do a neat crossover thing with MMZ/BN. Players could link Mega Man Zero 3 with one of the Battle Network games. This brought BN Viruses into the Cyberspace segments of MMZ3, and it brought a Z-Sabre Chip into BN. Sure, it's not an epic crossover, but it did lay the groundwork for how potential crossover series could have actually work.

Honestly, the Cyberspace introduced in Zero 3 lays the foundation for any crossover that could ever occur. All data flows to Cyberspace in the end, and it would be easy to say all of the time-based experiments in the Classic series screwed with the way data flows in Cyberspace. So really, anything could have happened there, had Capcom chosen to follow that route.

I really like the idea of dropping the -Man part of the robot masters name and going for a more musical angle. I don't mind some few changes on the gameplay as long as the game is good. I'm willing to give it a chance and wait to see.

God forbid this rumour turns out true. This new look is utter trash personally. If they actually tried to market the franchise like you know Fire Emblem did with Awakening then they would have money coming in. But the last few games had little to know advertising at all.

They shoould follow FE and do what they did look where it got them. FE became a huge part of the 3ds line up and brought it self out from possible cancellation to being one the go to games.

Capcom you have the perfect example to make Megaman a thing again but you are trying.

One thing I'd really appreciate above all else is at least some more character art. Maybe it's just the angle...maybe it's just that particular artist's artwork. Maybe seeing more of "Aki" in different poses and such will acclimate everyone to the new design.

The target audience is kids. You probably got into Mega Man games when you were little, right? If they made the target audience for the new Mega Man whiny thirty-year-olds who think gaming peaked in 1990 then we'd probably be in a game drought with nothing on the horizon except 8-bit merch and really expensive figures. Oh wait. :P

Even if the target audience is kids, doesn't mean that they should get shitty content because they will not know better, they definitely will. A game that is good, keeps being good after 20-30 years, and if the game gets the popularity it deserves for its quality and fanbase, then you bet your ass there are going to be figures.

I am so disappointed with this series, why can`t they just stick to the classic design instead of a Tron base look? I can only imagine how bad the game will turn out. I would rather see the return of the Ruby Spears Megaman cartoon from back in the 90s, I guess we will have to wait and see.

I seriously hope Capcom gets bought out by Nintendo, because right now, the Megaman franchise is suffering.